Wednesday, January 17, 2007

BALANCING ON THE NEWS CYCLE

1. The LA Times reports that the key Latino gang in the recent murder of a young Black girl, the Harbor Gateway 204th Street gang, has reached a "truce" in the turf wars around Harbor Gateway:

"[the gang] will open their neighborhood to all residents, including African Americans. In exchange, they want similar access to the predominantly African American part of the neighborhood."

"Najee Ali, an activist who runs Project Islamic Hope and negotiated the truce with the 204th Street gang, said the gang members are asking the city to use its eminent domain powers to accumulate land for a recreation center. The 12-square-block neighborhood has no park, school, community center or church and has only one business — a small market that the gang claims as its territory."

An interesting development, to be sure...I'll be curious to see how the city, police and other community officials respond to this.

Note: one of the other things the 204th St. gang want in exchange for the truce is for:

"police to review the cases of Albert Mata, Marco Milla and Mario Martinez, gang members convicted of killing blacks in the last decade. Gang members said that all three are innocent and that their cases have made Latino residents reluctant to call police."

Not sure how the last part is related to the first but in any case, there seems to be a variety of different machinations going on besides just the immediate end of racial violence in the area.

Meanwhile, NY Times is covering the story now and I spotted this little piece of melodramatic prose: "Ethnic and racial tension comes to Los Angeles as regularly as the Santa Ana winds."

This quote from local civil rights attorney Constance Rice is worth noting:

"You don’t find entire segments of the city against one another but in the hot spots and areas of friction you find it is because the demographics are in transition and there is an assertion of power by one group or the other and you get friction."

2. In other racial hate news: I've been following this story concerning a hate crime attack in Long Beach for several months now. Basically, three White women (late teens - 20s) were attacked by a group of Black youth in a tony neighborhood of Long Beach on Halloween night.

As one might expect, the case has garnered much interest but so far, the trial has been a hot mess, especially for prosecutors. The main problem is this: no one disputes that the attack happens. No one disputes the racial dynamics of the attack. But, no one is really sure if the suspects being charged are the right teens. One of the suspects claims that, far from joining in the attack, he was actually one of the people who helped put it to an end yet he's being charged. Meanwhile, "eyewitness" testimony is starting to seem like it it is punctured with holes.

This one has "reasonable doubt" written all over it and best believe, there's no way this trial can end without many people being extremely unhappy.

3. In lighter assault news: a Yale acapella group was attacked on New Year's Eve by a group of "San Francisco pre-school graduates." (I did not realize that prep school grads still ran in packs after prep school. Fascinating). As typical any case involving the police and city politics in S.F., what should have been a minor case has basically blown up into a huge mess, with "influential" Yale parents criticizing S.F.'s chief of police, Mayor Gavin Newsom firing back and then people dumping on Newsom. Which leads to the best part of this story...

Newsom asked if any members of the Yale group (all underage) were given liquor which prompted this response by a critic of the mayor:

""Who the heck does he think he is? Talk about kids drinking! Here you have a guy who's over 40 taking underage girls to bars where they're drinking stuff that sure looks like alcohol."

4. Speaking of law enforcement: why the f--- is SWAT needed to raid a mixtape office? As has been widely reported already, DJ Drama's Aphilliates Music Group offices in ATL were raided last night by the police, under orders by RIAA and Drama was charged with...racketeering.

Just so we're clear here: racketeering = "a pattern of illegal activity (as extortion and murder) that is carried out in furtherance of an enterprise (as a criminal syndicate) which is owned or controlled by those engaged in such activity." Normally, the term is used to describe the activities of organized crime. The whole situation is just so ridiculous.

What I want to know is this: RIAA usually only sics their enforcement teams on people after a complaint has been filed. However, Drama wasn't bootlegging albums in the conventional sense and most of his CDs were filled with exclusives rather than songs that appear elsewhere. WHO COMPLAINED?

Considering that many labels pay Drama to get their artists on his tapes, it's strange to think that someone would have filed a complaint over his activities. As a friend noted, many of the artists who recorded with Drama were technically violating terms of their contracts but that sort of thing happens so often that most labels look the other way since - hey, free promotion = good promotion.

The upside is that DJ Drama's street cred has just multiplied. We predict his first tape post-jail will be: DJ Drama Presents: The Man Can't Hold Me Down.